Workshop: Impact evaluation for definition of priorities of agricultural research

Climate change, growing population, mounting pressure on existing productive resources call for innovation and more sustainable approaches in agriculture worldwide. The attention to agricultural innovation in Latin America is high, supported by a set of public and private initiatives financed by international credit institutions, such as the World Bank, national governments, and private organizations. As a result, there is also a growing demand for knowledge on how best to allocate these resources so that they positively contribute to the policy processes at the national level and benefit all stakeholders.

The workshop is oriented toward decision makers in agricultural research and development, agricultural economists, and social scientists working on priority setting and impact assessment in Latin America. The objective of the workshop is to increase participants’ awareness of the different methods for ex-ante and ex-post impact assessment which are necessary for the generation of evidence on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of all research-based rural development interventions. It will involve presentations of different approaches and models for impact assessment, as well as examples of real applications of these tools. At the same time, participants will have the opportunity to present and share their own experiences and to discuss the applicability of state-of-the art models to specific cases of their current interest.